San Andreas, CA…Today was another marathon session on Cannabis for the Calaveras Board. What follows is the portion of the meeting after all of the public comments, etc. This is where they started discussing the action items and getting ready to vote. If you are following this topic this is the portion of the meeting where the rubber meets the road. First up Supervisor Mills brought forward a vote on the ban ordinance and it failed 3-2 with Mills and Clapp being the only ayes. One interesting discussion topic was between Tofanelli & Garamindi. Tofanelli has a hard cap of 50 parcels of 50 acres or larger with no more than 22,000 square ft of production area.

One area of potential compromise was that there might be a way for some of the displaced registered growers to create co-ops so to speak and combine their efforts to have multiple growers combining to reach the 22,000 ft limit. The rational is to provide at least some option for growers who have paid their taxes, gone through the process but are being zoned out of business.

With 50 large grows the hope is that it would make the process easier to police and manage from a law enforcement and compliance perspective. It is important for the supervisors to get this issue is a manageable format so the planning department and staff can get back to work on other important topics for the county including of paramount importance the General Plan update that has been in process since 2006.

The lack of a general plan has been a structural impediment to larger scale residential development projects. According to several realtors we have spoken with we are getting dangerously on low on inventory priced for entry level homes for our young working families.

The meeting was paused at 6pm and will resume at 9am on Thursday.